Twenty ten has been a great year for Android as well as gaming especially in the last quarter. HD screens, Gigahertz processors and better GPUs have allowed some great games to be ported across and we’ve even seen our share of original titles also.
What follows is our top five games of 2010, some are important, some are deep, and some are addictive but all of them are awesome.
5. Fruit Ninja by Halfbrick Studios
Along with marking the arrival of OpenFeint on Android, Fruit Ninja also became many people’s first Android purchase, to such an extent that most of the related support calls were questions for Google Checkout rather than the actual game. Selling over 50,000 copies in under a month Fruit Ninja quickly became one of the fastest sellers on Android and for good reason. The oddly compelling mindless cutting of flying fruit sets your mind on autopilot as you continue to slash away the hours.
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4. Jet Car Stunts by True Axis
Only just arriving by the year’s end Jet Car Stunts became a little buried in the holiday rush, but it deserves so much more. The task of getting around the crazy and well designed levels can be very challenging at first but each time you play you’ll do just that little bit better, encouraging you to give it yet another try. If competing against yourself isn’t enough then you can even compete seamlessly with the ghosts of anyone on the leaderboards, giving nearly endless challenges.
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3. Dungeon Hunter by Gameloft
Whereas most mobile games focus on simplicity and a quick pick up and play design, Dungeon Hunter completely forgets that it’s a mobile game and goes all out with a hack ‘n’ slash action RPG. Anyone who’s played Diablo will have some idea of the loot fever you can catch in these types of games, you’ll kill every creature and open every chest in the hope of coming across a new shiny piece of loot that you can attach to your guy. The loading times may be arduous compared with what you might be used to for an Android game but a few hours into the game and you’ll forget you’re even playing this game on your phone.
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2. Game Dev Story by Kairosoft co. ltd
There’s something unhealthily bad for you about Game Dev Story. It’s barely a game in the traditional sense and is more of a loose management simulator, but it’s inexplicably addictive. Talk to anyone (twitter search) who’s spent some time with Game Dev Story and they’ll tell you a tale of long nights spent and hours of sleep lost. You’ll constantly be striving to release your next game and try to get some more sales, or to level up another guy, or to release your next console. There’s always an excuse to keep playing.
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1. Angry Birds by Rovio
Angry Birds isn’t the hardest winner to predict, but take a look at anyone’s phone who’s played an Android game and you’ll likely find Angry Birds installed and to an outsider it might seem that it comes preinstalled on all Android devices. Sure it might not seem quite right for the winner to be the only free game in this list, but even with all games being priced equally we’re confident that the far reaching appeal of Angry Birds (and of course Angry Birds Seasons) would still make this the number one Android game, and for good reason.
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Congratulations to Angry birds and thank you to every developer out there that has helped bring gaming on the Android platform forward over the past year. And people, support these great games and the developers behind them, show them that we’re willing to pay for such great content and more greatness shall follow.
